Healing
by Kathryn Claire O'Connor
Summary: When Reid comes home to find Elle Greenaway disposing of his dilaudid, he's livid and she's determined to help him out of his addiction even though she too is still healing. But maybe they can heal each other along the way. How much can their situation - and their feelings for one another - change within a year? *Four-shot. T for cursing, drugs, mentions of murder and abuse*
1. Chapter 1

**Another challenge from Challenge King; this is going to be a four-shot. Enjoy!:)**

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Spencer Reid had one thing and one thing only on his mind when he stumbled his way up to his apartment after coming home from a hard case.

He had been trying not to take the dilaudid as much while he was traveling for work with the team – he knew that they always noticed when he did take it – and had even gone so far as to try going a touch cold turkey. He had left the two vials that he had in his apartment, so since he had been away on a case, he hadn't had a drop of the stuff in four days. It was starting to get to him.

However, now that he was home, he could plunge the needle into his arm and succumb to the mind-numbing relief that he so desperately craved.

He was shaking both with the craving and excitement at the thought of finally getting his drugs as he approached the door to his apartment, but he wasn't anywhere near so out of it that he didn't notice that someone had left the door to his residence open. He also knew full well that it hadn't been him when he had left four days ago; he always checked and double-checked that the door was both closed and locked before going to work each morning. His landlady had learned the hard way how paranoid he was about strangers in his place, so she didn't go in without his express permission either – permission that he knew very well he hadn't given her, or anyone else, for that matter.

Spencer stopped just short of his door, all of these thoughts flying through his mind in the instant before he reached down to his holster and unsheathed his gun, holding it warily at his side as he pushed open the door to his apartment with the other hand. From where he stood in the doorway, Spencer craned his neck to look around in his apartment as much as he could. He didn't see anything… but he heard water running in the kitchen. Someone had broken into his apartment!

He stepped lightly, silently towards the kitchen, now keeping his gun out in front of him, entirely ready to shoot at whatever perpetrator he found. He had been ready to find almost anything – except for the person that he saw.

Even seeing her just from the back – even after the months that he had gone without the slightest bit of contact from her – Spencer recognized her as being someone that he had already written off as being gone from his life forever, just like so many other people. But she was here – and he found that he was livid.

"What the h***!" Spencer yelled, shoving his gun back into his holster.

She yelped, whirling to face him and dropping the tiny glass bottles that she had been holding.

"What are you doing breaking into my apartment?" Spencer seethed, taking a step towards her.

She looked like she wanted to back away from his obvious fury – which was strange for her – but her back was already against the counter.

"You weren't home, so I had to get in somehow," Elle Greenaway answered, sounding much calmer than she looked.

"Where the h*** have you been?" Spencer shot off before his gaze registered the fragments of glass that littered the floor between them. His blood ran cold as he forgot his previous question, asking instead, "What did you _do_?"

"I poured them down the drain."

Again, Elle sounded unreasonably calm, and it just made Spencer feel the urge to break her neck more than what he already did.

"Why would you do that, you sick little freak?! You're a monster!" Spencer was down on his knees by now; gathering the shards into his hands and trying not to let his surprise, fury, and desperation come out through tears. "You're a cruel, uncaring, callous little…" he trailed off, unable to think of anything potent enough to call her. Instead he simply screamed again, "Why?!"

"Is the front door still open?" Elle asked, ignoring his questions for the time being.

"Yes," Spencer recalled, cringing at the idea of frail little Ms. Nussbaum who lived across the hall having heard his and Elle's exchange.

The former BAU agent slipped past him out of the kitchen. A moment later, he heard the door shut and then she reappeared in the kitchen doorway. Spencer could feel her watching him as he picked up the last pieces of glass and threw them away before grabbing a hand broom and getting back down on his knees.

"I really should make you do this, you know," Spencer muttered.

"You brought those vials back with you to begin with," Elle shot back, crossing her arms over her chest.

"How did you even know that I had them?" Elle paused, and Spencer sensed that she didn't want to answer. "How, Elle?" he pressed.

She sighed, looking down at her shoes before she answered, "After I left the BAU, I went back to Brooklyn and checked myself into a mental health facility. The fisher king and William Lee had messed with my head; and I knew that I needed help as well as anyone else on the team did. I got help there – the help that I needed – with everything from just getting my emotions settled back down to dealing with my drinking.

"They have television there, Spencer, and I saw the Henkel case all over the news. You know the story went national, right?" Elle waited until Spencer nodded grudgingly before she continued, "So, I did some research online – I even sent Penelope a couple of emails, just to check up on you and the rest of the team, to see how you all were handling everything. She mentioned something off-handedly once about you starting to have awful bouts of tremors and since I had already learned from my research that you had been drugged with Dilaudid, I put two and two together. I would have come to see you sooner, Spencer, but I knew that I needed to make sure I was better first before I tried to help someone else, which meant waiting until the doctors declared me fit to leave. That was yesterday, and now I'm here." She met him in the middle of the kitchen when he finally stood up, saying gently, "I want to help you get over this, Spencer."

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	2. Chapter 2

"I don't need help," Spencer said sharply, turning away from Elle to dump the last fragments of glass into the trashcan.

"Like h*** you don't! Look at yourself right now, Spencer; you're a wreck, and so is this apartment!"

"Let me rephrase that for you then," Spencer shot back, whirling back around to face her with blazing eyes. "I do not need help _from you_."

"Spencer…" she reached out to touch his arm, but he jerked quickly away.

"You left, El, so just do the entire team a favor and stay gone."

"Come on, Spencer, you know why I had to leave!" Elle protested. "They were going to try and lock me up for murdering Lee!"

"For one thing, they – by which I assume you can only mean the team – would have been entirely just in doing so. For another, that was ruled self-defense, so you could've stayed; you just chose not to."

"Because I knew I needed help!" Elle cried. "Didn't you hear what I just said? I knew I needed help, and I got it!" she took a deep breath, making herself calm down as she added softly, "Now I want to help you."

"I said I don't need your help," Spencer repeated.

Elle stayed silent for a minute, thinking this over, before she said, "Okay. Fine." She nodded calmly, and Spencer just stood there suspiciously, waiting for the trick that he knew she had thought up. "That's fine. But if you don't mind, can I stay here at your place overnight? I slept on the plane ride into D.C. last night and then came right to your apartment, so it's late and I literally have nowhere else in this city to go."

"Stay with Penelope," Spencer answered stonily.

"It's late enough for her to already be in bed, and I've broken into my quota of residences for the week, thanks."

"JJ, then."

Elle cocked her head to the side, saying, "I thought you had nothing to hide, Reid?"

They stared at one another for a minute, both of them knowing that he had been beaten.

He brushed past her and said, "You know where the couch is, and there are blankets in the hall closet," before he closed himself into his bedroom for the night.

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Spencer wasn't sure when exactly it was that he woke up in the wee hours of the next morning, or even where he was at first, just that two people were screaming and one of them was at his side, shaking him awake and calling his name. He slowly came to himself, realizing what was going on as he tried to regulate his ragged, terrified breathing. He was in his bed, in his own bedroom, having been yelling out in the throes of a hallucination before Elle had come in and shaken him out of it.

"You're alright, you're alright now," Elle was soothing him, brushing his hair back out of his face, her hands cool against his sweaty cheeks and forehead. "It's was just a dream – just the drugs taking their course through you."

Spencer knew full well that she was right, and yet he found himself unable to be logical at the moment. Instead he started clinging to her shirtfront, burying his face in her chest as he began to weep.

"It's alright," Elle murmured, winding one hand into his hair while the other rubbed slow circles on his back. "You're safe; I've got you."

"I need it, El," he whimpered pitifully, at once hating and needing the oblivion that the dilaudid would provide.

"No, you don't," Elle whispered the words even though they were alone in the apartment.

"Just a little," he begged.

"I dumped it all down the sink, remember? It's down in the sewers now, driving some rat that drank it out of his mind."

And suddenly – desperately – Spencer wished that he could trade places with that rat that Elle was talking about.

"Give me my phone," he demanded abruptly, sniffling as he sat up, regaining a semblance of control over his person as he pointed to his messenger bag on the other side of the room.

"Why?" Elle asked in confusion, standing slowly from the bed in anticipation of carrying out his request.

"I know a dealer who lives only a couple blocks from here; he can meet me somewhere."

Elle slammed herself back onto the bed, her expression turning fierce. "No, Spencer Reid," she practically growled. "You, doctor, have had your last drop of dilaudid on my watch, do you hear me?"

He whimpered her name, scrambling to think of a way to make her understand just how much he needed the drug.

"No, Reid," Elle repeated, softer this time, more… understanding… in her voice and eyes, mixing with the determination that was there. "We're going to get you over this, even if it kills us both, got it?"

"Don't you understand?" Spencer cried. "This _is_ going to kill me!"

"No, it won't," Elle contradicted, her manner unusually awash with care for the pitiful person that Spencer knew the dilaudid had reduced him to. "I'm going to be here every step of the way, Reid, I promise. I meant it when I said that I have nowhere to go now, which means that I can concentrate on helping you out of this addiction."

Feeling horribly overwhelmed by so many things – but mostly the terrifying fact that he realized that Elle meant it when she said she was never again going allow him to put dilaudid into his body – he began to sob once again.

"Reid… Spencer, you need to go back to sleep," Elle suggested softly. "Try to forget about everything and just drift back off; maybe have a good dream this time."

Spencer didn't resist when she gently pushed on his shoulders so that he would lie back down, but the way he looked at her made it clear that he wouldn't be going back to sleep anytime soon and he wanted her to know it. Elle sighed softly, her breath coming out against his forehead as she leaned over him and tucked the covers in around him.

"Good night, Reid," she murmured, turning to leave the bedroom.

Before he realized what he was doing, Spencer lashed out and grabbed her wrist, pleading, "Please don't leave me."

Elle turned back to him and nodded, moving to sit back down on the edge of the bed. Spencer opened the sheets to her in a silent offering, and with only a moment's pause, Elle climbed wordlessly in beside him, staying at his side the whole night, both of them wide awake as real withdrawal began to take him over.

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	3. Chapter 3

After that episode, Elle stopped really offering and Spencer stopped asking; they just made things happen. At first they were stepping all over one another in their spontaneous stab at platonic cohabitation, but eventually they quit stepping on one another and started moving in sync instead. Elle began to refer to herself as a sober companion – "Come on, Reid, don't tell me that you've never watched 'Elementary!" – and began to refer to him by his first name, or even "Sherlock" whenever she was in a good enough mood. He stopped resenting her reappearance and practically constant presence in his life and by the time that his drug cravings had ground mostly to a halt, he was beginning to enjoy it instead.

The one thing that threw any sort of pallor over this new life of theirs was the fact that none of the team had been informed of her resurgence.

"Good morning, sleepyhead," Elle said, grinning at him as he stumbled into the kitchen on a rare Saturday morning off of work.

He yawned, heading straight for his coffeemaker as he said, "Good morning, Watson."

"I said 'sleepyhead', not 'Sherlock'," Elle informed him.

Spencer flapped a careless hand in her direction, mumbling, "Too early; no coffee, no talkie."

Elle laughed out loud as she turned from the stove holding a plate of freshly-made pancakes. "'Talkie'? See, this is exactly why I like 'talkie-ing' to you in the mornings; you're so much more fun before you get your first cup of coffee!"

"Shut up!" Spencer whined, knowing yet not caring that he sounded like a four year old who had gone without his nap.

"Okay," Elle said, still grinning. "I guess since you're still so wacked that means you're too out of it to eat your share of pancakes."

Without a word, Spencer turned from the coffeemaker and grabbed the full plate from out of her hands, running into the living room and falling onto the couch.

"Spencer Reid, you cannot eat all of those pancakes on your own," she called after him, darting into the living room on his heels and landing practically on top of him as she skidded to a stop and plopped down on the couch.

"Yes, I can," Spencer objected, his mouth already full of chocolate chip pancake as he reached around her to get the television remote that lay on the coffee table.

He started an episode of "Doctor Who" from the recordings on his DVR – something that Elle had talked him into getting – and sat back against the couch. Neither one of them thought anything of the fact he kept an arm around Elle's shoulders or that she snuggled in a little closer to him as she curled her legs up onto the couch and grabbed a pancake off of the plate that he still held. They didn't consider this to be anything special – it was just Saturday as they'd come to know it.

"Do you have any plans for the day?" Spencer asked with his eyes still on the TV as he absently ran his hand through her hair.

Although Elle hadn't gotten an official job – Spencer's pay check was more than enough to comfortably support them both – she had taken to doing a lot of volunteer work around the city with drug addicts and domestic and sexual abuse victims.

"None," Elle answered. "How about you? Is the team doing anything this weekend?"

"Garcia and Hotch talked Rossi into a barbeque at his place so that they could finally see his mansion, but I told them that I want busy."

"Doing what?" she asked with a not-quite-hidden laugh.

"Writing a dissertation on female serial killers."

"Close enough to the truth, I guess," Elle said, a thread of pain lacing her otherwise sardonic tone.

"Hey," Spencer objected, looking down at her and turning her chin so that she had to look him in the eyes. "You're not a serial killer. We've been over this; PTSD can have just as strong a grip on a person as a drug habit can, and make them do things that are just as out of character."

"I know that."

"Then don't talk like that, and don't forget it either," Spencer ordered, placing a chaste kiss onto her forehead. "I don't like it when you think and say stuff like that."

"Okay," she agreed with a soft smile, laying her head over on his shoulder as she turned her attention back to the Doctor Who rerun.

Spencer, though, found that he was suddenly too caught up in his thoughts to pay any attention to the television – new thoughts, scary thoughts, thoughts that… the more he ran back over the past few months… should've become obvious long ago.

He ran back over those first hellish months after she had disposed of his dilaudid, and, just as importantly, over the time that had passed since the drugs had loosened their hold on him. She had been living with him for almost a year now, and for about half of that time they both knew that he would've been fine without her presence in the apartment keeping him drug-free and accountable. Yet she hadn't left – hadn't even brought up doing so.

Why not?

"What did you say?" Elle asked, sitting up and looking at him with wide hazel eyes that were drunk on the relaxation of their morning.

"I didn't say anything, did I?"

"Yeah, you did. I thought you asked 'why' something."

"Oh." Spencer took a deep breath, deciding to take the plunge and voice the question – he was suddenly too curious not to. He reached over and paused the television recording, turning to look her in the eyes again as he said, "Well, yeah, I guess I did. I asked 'Why not?'"

"'Why not' what?"

"Why… um…" Spencer looked down at his lap, twisting the remote in his hands as his heart began to beat at a strangely high speed. Was he really sure that he wanted to know the answer to this question? "Why haven't you left me yet?"

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	4. Chapter 4

"Do you want me to leave?" Elle asked carefully, the look in her eyes unreadable by Spencer.

"No!" he cried instantly – a little too quickly, a little too loudly. "That's – that's not what I meant at all!"

"Is our hiding my being here putting you in too hard of a position with the team?"

"No, they don't push me for information since they don't suspect anything."

Elle cocked her head to the side, inquiring, "What did you mean, then?"

Spencer swallowed, trying to stumble through an acceptable explanation that would make her understand the thoughts that had just made a sweeping invasion his mind. "I just… I've been clean for almost a year, and I really think that I would be okay if you moved out – not that I'm trying to get you to leave me by any means - but if... if there's somewhere else that you need or want to be, or something else that you want to do besides babysit me for the rest of your life… I was just wondering why you hadn't gone off and done it by now."

"Because…" Elle too seemed to pause to consider what she was about to say before she said it. "It's not that I don't trust you to stay clean, Spencer – because I completely do – but I… I like this," her gesture swept in a semicircle to include the entirety of the apartment. "Whatever this is that we've created here… and I don't want to give it up. When I came to you here, there was nothing else that I needed to do besides make peace with who I had been, who I was, and what I had become." She swallowed nervously, admitting, "I'm not sure whether or not you realize this, Spencer, but I was able to do that because of you. Helping you through your addiction gave me a purpose in my life again once I got out of the nuthouse-"

"Mental health facility," Spencer corrected absently.

Elle smirked drily at him before continuing, "By the time you were clean and I was emotionally stable again, this – being here and living with you – had just become my life, and it was a life that I realized I loved – that I still love even now." Her soft smile fell, and he sensed that she was leaving something unsaid as she finished, "But if you want me to find someplace else to stay, I will."

"No!" Spencer said again, reaching for her hand as he repeated his plea from her first night in the apartment, realizing for the first time that it had taken on an entirely different dimension as he said, "Elle, please don't leave me… I don't know if I could handle being without you anymore. I think… I think that I might have fallen in love with you."

Tears instantly sprang into Elle Greenaway's eyes and the tenderest smile that Spencer had ever seen transformed her face.

It terrified him… until she whispered in a voice choked with emotions, "I think I might just be in love with you too, Dr. Reid."

Spencer stared at her for a long moment before a slow smile slid across his face. Before he registered what he was doing, he had taken her face in his hands and kissed her with more passion than he had realized he was capable of.

They eventually broke apart, catching their breaths with their foreheads still touching.

"I love you," Elle said softly.

"I love you, too," Spencer breathed, testing the words out on his tongue. He kissed her again, suggesting wildly, "Let's get married."

Elle sat up at that, her shock at his suggestion projecting itself as a laugh as she asked, "What?"

"I'm serious, El!" Spencer protested, reasoning, "We've been living together for almost a year – we know that we work well together. Why not?"

"Okay," Elle said. "Even if I were to agree to this crazy scheme – on which I am entirely blaming your being born and raised in Las Vegas – who would we invite to this supposed wedding? The team?"

"Exactly!"

"They don't even know that I'm back in town, let alone that I've been here for basically a year already!"

"Then let's tell them," Spencer said, bounding onto his feet and pulling her up with him. "Elle Greenaway, we are going to a barbeque."

"What about your female serial killers?" she asked.

Spencer rolled his eyes, answering, "If there's anything that the BAU has taught me, it's that no matter what, the serial killers will always be there tomorrow. Today we are going to a barbeque where I am going to exclaim to the world – or at least the team – just how much l love you."

"You're crazy," Elle laughed.

"You don't mind it, and we both know it," Spencer said, taking her hand and hauling her into the kitchen to start cleaning up their morning mayhem in preparation for leaving.

Elle grinned, "It's true. As a matter of fact, I love it just like I love everything else about you. By the way," she added, standing on her tiptoes to give him a kiss on the cheek, "It took you long enough to figure all of this out. I was about to give up hope that you would ever get a clue."

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And that was how, no less than one month later, Spencer Reid and Elle Greenaway found themselves standing in the sunshine before God, man, a justice of the peace, Aaron Hotchner, David Rossi, Jennifer Jareau, Derek Morgan, Emily Prentiss, and Penelope Garcia, committing themselves to each other for better or for worse. After all, they'd both already seen the other at their worst and learned to love one another anyway, so why not?

The way they saw it was that if you were going to help someone heal, it only made sense to stick around to see the closed wounds fade until they disappeared altogether – and that would mean a lifetime spent together, healing the hurts that life was bound to throw at them as they came. That was fine with Spencer and Elle, though.

After all, that was what love was.

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**And thus we come to the end of the story. Thanks for sticking with me. Hopefully you guys enjoyed this! Reviews make my day if you feel so inclined! Thanks!:)**


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